John B. Watson

John Broadus Watson (9 January 1878-25 September 1958) was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. He first promoted this idea in 1913, believing that humans and animals react to certain stimulai with natural reflexes.

Biography
John Broadus Watson was born in Travelers Rest, South Carolina in 1878, and he had a rough childhood; he was born into a poor family with an alcoholic father (who later ran away with two Native American women) and a strictly religious mother, and he had a poor education and a criminal record. However, he managed to enter Furman University at the age of 16; although he was a poor student, he left with a master's degree at the age of 21. Watson had few friends, but he devoted himself to his education, and he later entered the University of Chicago, where he was educated by John Dewey and several other fine faculty members. In 1903, he earned his Ph.D., having written a dissertation on animal behavior. In 1908, he accepted a faculty position at Johns Hopkins University and was immediately promoted to be the chair of the psychology department. It was at this time that Watson, using results from his experiments with both humans and animals, began to develop the theory of behaviorism, which he promoted during his address at Columbia University in 1913. He conducted research on animal behavior, child rearing, and advertising, and he also conducted the "Little Albert experiment" to test animals' natural reactions to loud noises and the famous "Kerplunk" rat maze experiment. From 1910 to 1915, he was editor of the Psychological Review. In 1936, he retired from writing, and he died in Woodbury, Connecticut in 1958 at the age of 80.